Author: Serkadis

Get ready for a whole lot more Pebble. The smartwatch company just announced several software enhancements for the Pebble and a $15M Series A led by Charles River Ventures. Pebble is not going to sit around, scared of iWatch rumors. They’re plowing forward on their own accord and committed to providing the best platform possible for developers and consumers.

“We are pledging to support the developers hacking on Pebble,” stated Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky told me in an interview. “We want to make the Pebble the go-to place for developers.” And with that the company released its first SDK last month and is following it up today with several big improvements.

The cash injection will be used to increase the company’s software engineering team’s headcount and allow the company to scale to meet still-growing customer demand. CVS’ Partner George Zachery is joining Pebble’s board of directors, a move that excites Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky.

“George is the one that shared our vision of wearable computing,” Eric told me in a chat this morning. Several angels also participated in the round, but Eric indicated that Charles River Ventures funded the majority of the Series A. This round of funding joins the $375k the company previously received from four angel investors, including Paul Buchheit, a partner at Y Combinator, and Tim Draper of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. And don’t forget about the $10.3M Pebble raised on Kickstarter.

“The tremendous response we received from Kickstarter backers validated our belief in the value of a smartwatch as a wearable computer, but also in the value an open platform brings to truly personalizing the watch to their daily activities”, said Migicovsky, Pebble’s founder in a released statement today. “This new investment will help us build out the Pebble development ecosystem and deliver on Pebble’s extraordinary potential.”

Pebble is still working on fulfilling the 85,000 orders placed on Kickstater. To date 70,000 have reached early supporters. “It’s pretty crazy thinking there are 70,000 Pebbles out there,” Eric told me proudly. “Tens of thousands” of additional orders have been placed, Eric said.

The company is aiming for retail availability in four to six months.

Pebble also announced several software enhancements for its smartwatch today. The SDK, which the company appropriately calls the PebbleKit, enables third party apps to send and receive data from the smartwatch.

This two-way communication is a huge step forward for the smartwatch, allowing the watch to display a large variety of information including weather and sports scores or even act as a remote control for the phone itself. Until now, apps were limited to basic functions like just display a watch face or displaying a simple game of snake.

Pebble also released the Pebble Sports API, enabling developers to build GPS-enabled smartwatch apps similar to the RunKeeper app announced a couple of weeks back.

Since releasing its initial SDK back in April, Pebble states the kit was downloaded over 8,000 times, resulting in over 5,000 unique watchapps with 300,000 installs during the last month. Owners are clearly hungry for more Pebble features.

The Pebble was supposed to usher in a new era of productivity by strapping a communication device to our wrist, but the initial feature set was limited even with the first SDK release. However, Pebble is keeping at it and today’s funding announcement and software development release should result in a big harvest of fresh apps.

“Everyone is talking about wearable devices,” Eric explained. “We’re very happy that Pebble is a platform people can build on today.”

Wearables is the next big thing. There’s no denying that. Even if Apple skips the iWatch device, Google Glass and others are pushing forward the thought of wearable computing. But the Pebble is here today and developers have latched onto the platform, outing custom watch faces, games, and apps. With the Pebble, the future is here now.

Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

PernixData closes on $20 million round.  Software-defined storage platform company PernixData announced the close of an over-subscribed $20 million Series B financing. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) with additional support from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and industry leaders Mark Leslie , John Thompson and Lane Bess. The Flash Virtualization Platform (FVP) from PernixData disrupts the storage market by enabling virtualized datacenters to take advantage of an architecture that decouples storage performance from storage capacity. With this additional investment, PernixData will grow its sales and marketing globally, continue its ambitious R&D roadmap, develop a channel eco-system and accelerate go-to-market plans with leading players in the server and storage industries. “PernixData is solving one of the biggest outstanding issues in enterprise data centers: the cost and performance of storage,” said Matt Murphy of KPCB. “Pernix has the opportunity to do for storage what VMware did for compute. The technical team they’ve assembled for such an ambitious mission is unparalleled.”

Violin Memory speeds Oxford Press. Violin Memory announced it has helped Oxford University Press to improve its SAP IPM application performance by three times – cutting month end processing by two and a half days, and reducing average dialog response time; the time it takes from the first dialog request to the presentation of the final data – by 30 percent. Working with solution partner SCC Oxford Press selected the Violin Memory 6212 Flash Memory Array, an all-silicon shared storage system with industry-leading performance (up to 1 million IOPS) and ultra-low latency. “Most importantly we’ve removed the daily impact and the pressing risk to our month end close caused by the ever-lengthening batch processing times required as the data-set grew,” said Mark Harwood, SAP Lifecycle for Oxford University Press. “The decision to choose Violin Memory was made much easier by the professional approach shown by their team throughout our engagement, which has helped us to better understand all-flash memory arrays, an area of technology that is new to us.”

HP expands liquid cooling to Z820 workstations. Asetek announced that HP (HPQ) has expanded the availability of Asetek liquid cooling to include single processor Z820 workstations. Previously only available in dual CPU configurations, the more affordable single CPU Z820 with Asetek’s integrated sealed loop liquid cooling provides reduced system noise and increased productivity. The design win is expected to translate into an 8-10 percent increase in Asetek’s workstation business.  “HP has always been on the cutting edge of workstation technology,” said Scott Chambers, Senior Director of Marketing at Asetek. “The expansion of Asetek liquid cooling within the Z820 line further validates Asetek liquid cooling as a valuable addition for improved productivity”.

Last week electric car maker Tesla hit the goal of delivering its first profitable quarter in the history of the decade-old company, and since then Tesla’s stock has soared and traded at over $90 per share. At the same time, review giant Consumer Reports said last week that Tesla’s Model S outscored “every other car in our test ratings.” That’s every other car out there, not just other electric cars.

What followed those milestones has been an interesting mix of attention on Tesla from the media and bloggers — including surprise, extreme 180-degree about-face, and a general lovefest — as well as attention from Wall Street, which bifurcated into newly won-over Tesla-believers and disturbed Tesla shorters. What most of these people fail to realize is that the road to true innovation in the auto industry takes a very long time.

On the blogging front, for example, in a Business Insider post on Wednesday called What Everyone Got Wrong About Tesla, a writer chronicles the criticism of Tesla over the years. The writer didn’t include my least favorite article from all of 2013 written on Tesla, by Henry Blodget, editor-in-chief of Business Insider, called “The Tesla Nightmare Shows Why Today’s All-Electric Cars Are (Basically) Dead On Arrival.”

It’s not that electric cars won’t struggle (see my long investigative piece on Fisker), but that many people just don’t get how the ecosystem, technology, and marketplace work and are so quick to make declarations about electric cars for the sole purpose of getting attention and — if you’re a blogger — page views. Tesla has actually emerged as a success story, not in the last week, but gradually over a decade by overcoming hurdles every day.

Another company took a very long time to twist and turn, and finally come out on top, too: Apple. And some of Tesla’s most gushy recent love-fest posts are about its comparison to the design-centric gadget maker: Tesla is the new Apple, Would Apple really buy Tesla? (no), and Elon Musk is the new Steve Jobs. Like the legions of Apple and Jobs fanboys, Tesla and Musk are now on the way to developing their own fanboys that will track their every move and product.

When it comes to investors, short interest (the amount of shares that investors have sold short, expecting the stock to drop in price) in Tesla since the company went public in 2010 has been nothing short of remarkable. According to Bloomberg, “short interest in Tesla was 40 percent of available shares as recently as April 19, more than 11 times the average of companies in the Russell 1000.”

But following Tesla’s milestone’s last week, short interest dropped by 17 percent in the five days through May 13, noted Bloomberg — Tesla shorters were forced to “buy $276 million worth of the automaker’s shares, pushing the company toward the biggest rally in the Russell 1000 Index (RIY) this year.”

I don’t remember a company in recent years, other than maybe Apple, that has had such massive skepticism from media and investors, followed by such intense love. This week there’s Apple-style product rumors buzzing about Tesla showing off a self-driving Model S, and launching a battery-swapping service (that would actually be cool). Usually it’s the love-hate relationship unfolds the other way around. The internet is a weird place.

Tesla actually made it past its most recent dangerous startup phase over half a year ago. Back in November 2012 Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla had “made it through the Valley of Death,” and reached its goals for scaling up Model S production.

Musk might be a media and stock puppeteer (see the 5 lessons from the NYT, Tesla dust up) but as a leader of a public company it’s not in his best interest to publicly lie. Tesla was clearly on its way to success back then — after nine years of overcoming hurdles. The earnings and stock are just a delayed sign of that performance. And before that Musk made it through the darker periods of the company in 2008, by personally floating the company and even borrowing money from friends.

The reality is that Tesla has just started on its full court press on announcements, media coverage, and stock growth, and is hoping for a marketcap that rivals the big auto companies. These are 10 milestones that Tesla hopes will enable it to hit a $43 billion marketcap.

Tesla will also no doubt hit some hurdles as it tries to transition into a larger auto maker — if anyone remembers it delayed its Model X launch by a year to the end of 2014. But it’s actually pretty hard to be an independent new automaker, and true game-changing innovation is even harder and takes a very long time.

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There are never enough points for all the weapons I want and never enough building blocks to make sure that enemies have a hard time reaching my core.

The paragraph above sums up my feelings before starting each new wave battle in Sanctum 2 and also explains why the game is an interesting mix of tower defense and first person-shooter that should appeal to fans o… (read more)

Google has sent a cease and disist letter to Microsoft for building a native YouTube app for Windows 8, and violating its terms of service in three areas.

In the letter, Google explains, “It appears that the application: (1) allows users to download videos from YouTube; (2) prevents the display of advertisements in YouTube video playbacks; and (3) plays videos that our partners have restricted from playback on certain platforms (e.g. mobile devices with limited feature sets). These features directly harm our content creators and clearly violate our Terms of Service.”

Here’s the letter in its entirety (via The Verge):

Microsoft has responded to the situation. The Verge quotes a spokesperson as saying: “We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.”

You can hear Page’s comments near the end of the Google I/O keynote here.

Google has so car given Microsoft until May 22nd to remove the app. It launched last week.

True innovators are a little nuts. So when Davide Vigano starts talking about the need to reinvent the fashion industry via technology, anyone who has seen a person wearing Google Glass or the ubiquitous plastic wrist bands that track fitness goals might be forgiven for rolling their eyes: Both are decidely unfashionable outside the geek community.

Yet Vigano, who is the CEO of Heapsylon, a startup based out of Redmond, Wash. and wears Armani shirts (casual Armani, but still Armani), thinks he has a solution to wearable computing that people will find, well … wearable.

At first glance Heapslylon makes a pair of smart socks that mimic many of the data gathering functions of any other fitness tracker on the market. Except that they are socks. And it’s tough to imagine one wearing the same pair of sensor-packed socks each day or even wearing socks every day. How is this a good idea? How is this the future of fashion and technology?

The Sensoria smart sock and anklet.

But just as the Kindle Fire is merely a vehicle for Amazon’s real ambitions, as opposed to the sum of them, Heapsylon isn’t really in the sock business. The socks are made of a special material that the company developed — it is reportedly comfortable, washable and packed with sensors. And that material is the crux of what Heapslyson has developed. The socks are both an effort to put the new material through its paces with the hardest-working piece of clothing in a person’s wardrobe, as well as an application to showcase what the material can do.

Heapsylon was started in October 2010 by three former Microsoft employees: Davide Vigano, Mario Esposito, who is the CTO at Heapsylon, and Maurizio Macagno, the VP of development at the company. Both Macagno and Esposito worked on the Kinect, but all three left Microsoft to pursue this vision of combining technology and fashion in a way that could advance both industries.

“The outfit is the computer,” said Vigano of their vision. But after they quit, and started playing around with tiny sensors and conductive fabrics they realized that there was a gap between what they wanted and what technology could provide. So they set about researching materials. The result of that is the fabric that they have since turned into socks.

“Quite frankly we thought it would easier,” said Vigano. “The materials research has been challenging to say the least.”

The anklet for the Sensoria smart sock.

The sock and they accompanying hardware that tracks the data from the sock’s sensors are called the Sensoria Fitness smart socks. There will be two or maybe three pressure sensors in the sock that will share exact data on how many steps a person takes, their stride, whether they tend to turn in or out when they run, and maybe even weight change. The socks come with an ankle bracelet that gathers the data from the sick and transmits it (see above.) It will eventually be possible to use the socks as a scale to track your weight once Heaspylon gets the algorithms down.

Vigano said the company plans to launch the package of the socks and the hardware via a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo within the next month or two. While at first it will be targeted at the hard-core running market, the socks might find a home in other sports such as golf, where tracking the weight on the ball or heel of the foot can help improve performance. The price for the package is yet to be determined. And he declined to share the cost of the sensor-rich fabric.

But perhaps most important for the future of Heapsylon, and the future of fashion-forward wearables, is that Vigano aims to license the fabric technology and the data it gathers from its socks for other uses. For example, the material could be used in football helmets to measure the incidence of concussions, or the exact footfall data from the sock might supplant the general data provided by a pedometer for a person’s run. And other companies might use the socks to develop data profiles around other sports, like the golf example above.

The Heapsylon employees and founders.

There’s also no reason to stick only with pressure sensors. Other sensors could be embedded into the Heapsylon fabric, although the company hasn’t focused on that as a small startup with a a relatively small and undisclosed amount of angel funding. Vigano hopes to seek a formal venture round after the crowd-funding campaign proves (or disproves) the market opportunity.

For now, the five-person startup is heading toward a production version of the Sensoria Sock hoping that it will be the launch of a revolution in wearable computing that goes far beyond the smart watches and accessories available today. If Heapsylon’s vision of making technology disappear into fabric gains ground, then perhaps Vigano’s future Armani shirts might not just look good, but they could do good by sharing relevant data that monitors his health or his whereabouts for loved ones.

Of course, such data could also be used for less-then-noble causes, or the market may never buy into the idea of smart socks. But as someone who looks at the intersection between technology and fashion, I welcome anyone who wants to develop a product that emphasizes the form, the function and the feel of the wearable tech as opposed to just the tech.

Not everyone wants to look like they just got off the Caltrain at Mountain View.

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Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

Cyan selected by GlobalConnect for 400G network.  Cyan (CYNI) customer GlobalConnect, the leading Danish alternative provider of network and hosting services, announced it has completed the deployment of a 400G network employing the Cyan Blue Planet software-defined networking (SDN) system and Z-Series packet-optical platform throughout Denmark. The Denmark-wide 400G rollout is anchored by Cyan Z-Series packet-optical transport platforms (P-OTPs). The GlobalConnect network spans Denmark with 12,000 fiber route kilometers and includes extensions into northern Germany and southern Sweden. The network upgrade allows GlobalConnect to deliver a wide variety of ultra-high-capacity wavelength and Ethernet services to enterprise customers and data center operators, as well as wholesale services to other carriers. “Many people think that the name of the game for service providers is simply adding more and more capacity,” said Peter Olsen, GlobalConnect chief technical officer.  ”While capacity is certainly crucial, unless we can drive enhanced capabilities and features into our network we will suffer from bandwidth commoditization. Working with Cyan, we’ve been able to architect a next-generation network that is operationally more efficient, delivers the scalability we need, and provides a means to deliver enhanced services to our customers.”

Yahoo! Japan deploys Juniper QFabric. Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that Yahoo! Japan has deployed a Juniper Networks QFX3000-M QFabric System at its new environmentally friendly “Shirakawa Data Center.” It is a large-scale IT data center that covers the Tokyo metropolitan area and East Japan. It now operates a single-layer network fabric based on Juniper Networks QFabric technology to deliver more cost-effective, low-latency performance and linear scalability. The deployed system will support up to 768 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) with low latency, providing YAHOO! Japan customers with a high-quality online experience, no matter where they are. A MX960 3D Universal Edge Router is also implemented at the site to support advanced services. ”YAHOO! Japan is a pioneer in Internet service delivery, and Juniper Networks has been proud to play a part of this success for many years,” said Douglas Murray, senior vice president, Juniper Networks Asia Pacific. ”Implementing QFabric as the network foundation of its new state-of-the-art data center will support the company’s expansion and future innovation in Japan seamlessly. It also serves as a testament to QFabric traction in Japan and throughout the Asia Pacific region.”

EdgeCast and Telia Sonera partner.  EdgeCast Networks and TeliaSonera announced a managed CDN agreement that will bring new site acceleration and CDN solutions to TeliaSonera’s customer base while expanding the reach and capacity of the EdgeCast network. Under the agreement, both companies will make significant investments in high-performance network infrastructure, along with sales and marketing efforts, to address the massive demand for acceleration and CDN solutions across TeliaSonera’s Nordic markets. TeliaSonera will leverage its massive regional network presence, along with EdgeCast’s proven CDN technology, to build out a regional CDN that will be directly connected to EdgeCast’s worldwide network. “TeliaSonera is the premier, dominant provider in a critical region — and after many years working with them, I’m excited we’re bringing our relationship to this new level,” said James Segil, co-founder and president of EdgeCast Networks. “They have a huge number of deep customer relationships, and will now be able to offer those customers powerful and proven CDN solutions.”

Google is now letting businesses use YouTube to sell products. Businesses have been using YouTube to market products almost as long as YouTube has been around (at least since businesses figured it out that it could be about more than cat videos), and for quite some time, businesses have been able to advertise through clickable ads inside of YouTube videos.

Now, Google is taking the YouTube ecommerce thing to a whole new level by essentially letting users shop for products right through the business’ YouTube channel.

“Every day, millions of people turn to YouTube for advice, from learning how to do the perfect smokey eye to trying out a new recipe for mashed potatoes,” says Danielle Tomassini from the Google Shopper team. “People are using YouTube not just for entertainment, but to learn a new skill, find more information, and shop for products. This presents a unique opportunity for consumer goods brands to reach shoppers in the moment and provide them with an easy way to go from watching a video to purchasing the product.”

The new offering comes in the form of a new channel gadget, and lets users shop for products from various retailers from the comfort of the YouTube channel they’re already browsing.

“This new channel gadget will enable shoppers to seamlessly move from browsing how-to videos and featured products to finding which retailers carry them, check availability, compare prices and make a purchase, all with fewer clicks than today,” says Tomassini.

Google has launched the gadget with Unilever to highlight hair products from TRESemmé.

“There is a growing interest for ‘hair how to’ videos on YouTube with millions of users going to YouTube to learn about hairstyles and hair care,” says Tomassini. “By providing hair tutorial videos, tips and tricks, and interviews with trendsetters, TRESemmé has already generated more than 2.7 million views on their channel. Through their newly designed channel, TRESemmé can also now connect these consumers with the products they’re watching in the demo videos in a faster more efficient way, shortening the shopping journey.”

You can see the feature in action at the TRESemmé YouTube channel.

As you can see, this includes not only a “Buy Now” button, but product reviews and a “Learn More” button, which enables the business to share details about the product, to hopefully help convince customers to buy it:

When the user clicks “Buy Now,” they’re presented with the option to select the products they want to purchase. While TRESemmé only has a single product highlighted here, one can only assume that businesses can include more. It’s unclear what the limit on this might be.

From there, users can comparison shop from stores that have the product available, and see if it is in stock. When they click on one of the stores, they’re taken to the product page on that store’s site.

It’s interesting that Google isn’t tying this into Google Shopping (otherwise, you wouldn’t be seeing Amazon there). That doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.

Google is actually offering the gadget as a premium offering for its consumer goods clients, produced through GloTo.

So far, Google isn’t making it incredibly easy to just go and set one of these channels up. Right now, you have to speak with a Google representative to determine “if the shopper channels is the right solution for your brand”.

The feature could play a major role in turning YouTube into a major driver of ecommerce. However, there are some things greatly holding it back. One is the aforementioned lack of Google Shopping integration, but another major factor is that it requires users to actually be on a channel page. How much YouTube viewing do you do from the channel page? If your’e like me, probably not a whole lot.

People consumer videos from their YouTube homepage stream, when they’re shared via social media, and when they’re embedded on other web pages. None of these scenarios will cater to sales through this new feature (unless ads pointing to to the channel as the landing page are placed within the videos).

But this could just be a starting point, and could grow into something much bigger.

Google gave an incredibly lengthy keynote to open up Google I/O on Wednesday. This included a number of announcements pertaining to Android, Google Play, Chrome, Google+, Search and Google Maps, yet still didn’t come close to covering all of the company’s announcements for the day.

At the end, CEO Larry Page made a surprise appearance, and engaged in a Q&A session with audience members.

More Google news here.

Mellanox (MLNX) announced its intent to acquire privately held Kotura, a leading innovator and developer of advanced silicon photonics optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications.

The approximately $82 million deal will boost Mellanox’s ability to deliver high-speed networks with next generation optical connectivity. Kotura holds over 120 granted or pending patents in CMOS photonics and packaging design. When combined with Kotura technology, the Mellanox interconnect products will reach 100Gb/s and beyond, and have longer reach optical connectivity at a lower cost, allowing users to further reduce their capital and operating expenses.

“We believe that silicon photonics is an important component in the development of 100 Gigabit InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions, and that owning and controlling the technology will allow us to develop the best, most reliable solution for our customers,” said Eyal Waldman, president, CEO and chairman of Mellanox Technologies. “We expect that the proposed acquisition of Kotura’s technology and the additional development team will better position us to produce 100Gb/s and faster interconnect solutions with higher-density optical connectivity at a lower cost. We welcome the great talent from Kotura and look forward to their contribution to Mellanox’s continued growth.”

Kotura launched its low-power 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s) optical engine to support the interconnect fabric at the OFC/NFOEC conference last year. Mellanox expects to establish its first R&D center in the United States at Kotura’s Monterey Park, California location, and retain Kotura’s existing product lines to ensure continuity for customers and partners.  It also believes the proposed acquisition will enhance its competiveness and its position as a leading provider of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for servers and storage systems.

“This acquisition is important for both companies to enable interconnect innovation for data centers that require solutions that move data faster and more efficiently. Together, we can execute faster and deliver better solutions based on Kotura’s silicon photonics platform that delivers the demands of 100Gb/s interconnects and beyond,” said Jean-Louis Malinge, president and CEO of Kotura, Inc. “We are delighted to join the Mellanox team and look forward to working together to propel the combined company’s further growth.”

Thirteen years ago Adam Dunkels was trying to hook up a hockey team in Lulea, Sweden with sensors and cameras so coaches and fans could track helmet cams and players’ vital signs. It was an academic project but it was also an early example of the internet of things. The project was doomed to fail for a variety of reasons, but out of that experience came a lightweight code for connecting devices called Lightweight IP.

A later version of that code became the base for LEGO Mindstorms and a variety of other connected projects. But Dunkels realized that to truly build a platform for connected devices he needed even lighter weight code. So he built Contiki, an operating system of sorts of the internet of things. And now he’s commercializing all that he’s learned in a startup called ThingSquare. In the podcast we discuss the history of the internet of things and when we reached the tipping point that made the internet of things inevitable.

(Download this episode)

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Show notes:
Host: Stacey Higginbotham
Guest: Adam Dunkels, chairman, co-founder and chief architect of ThingSquare

• How connecting a hockey team in 2000 helped him learn what the internet of things needed.
• Why he build LWIP, microIP and later Contiki as an OS for the internet of things.
• The factors that led to a tipping point for the internet of things.
• Dunkels tells me to stop looking at the future and to pay attention to the present. Because the internet of things is here today.

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IoT Podcast: Where self-milking cows graze fields of data gold

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What you really need to know before buying connected devices

How the internet of things may make parents less worried but more neurotic

Shark Week for the internet of things

What the Internet of Things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings

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So much for my hardware predictions of what to expect at Google I/O. Instead of an updated Nexus 7 tablet or a new Chromebook model, Google spent three hours during Wednesday’s keynote to discuss services and feature upgrades for both Chrome and Android. I do think that in the coming months we’ll see improved Google devices, but that’s not what this year’s I/O event is all about. And even though I’m a gadget guy, I can appreciate the message Google is sending this week.

Unification was the big theme

As I tweeted during our live blog, there was a very common theme throughout the keynote and it had absolutely nothing to do with hardware:

If I could describe #io13 in one word it would be "unification". Same features, services, UI and experiences on Chrome and Android.—
Kevin C. Tofel (@KevinCTofel) May 15, 2013

Any thoughts of Chrome merging with Android in the traditional sense can be dismissed based on what I heard at the keynote. Instead, the two distinct platforms are sharing services, APIs, and design cues. What does that mean? Whatever Google services you use on an Android phone or tablet can be used on a desktop or laptop in Chrome, for example. For the first time, Chrome as a browser is good enough to be the glue that ties user experiences together between mobile devices and traditional computers.

Where are the commonalities between web, tablet and phone now?

How so? Take a look at the new Google+ stream. It appears more card-based — akin to Google Now — and looks the same whether you’re viewing it in Chrome on a Windows PC or on a Nexus 10 tablet. And although it’s a smaller screen, the same basic view appears in Google+ on an Android phone or an iPhone for that matter.

The phones only show a single column of information and you can have the exact same Google+ view in Chrome, or you can set the browser to show two columns. (Hint: Click More in Google+ on Chrome, scroll to the bottom of the menu and you’ll see the Stream Layout option)

Here’s another example (and one I’m very happy to see): not only can developers take advantage of Google Cloud Messaging for push notifications in apps or web, but Google is synchronizing notifications. So if you get a new Google+ comment notification on your Android device and read the comment, that same notification won’t appear in Chrome. Or vice versa, of course. Many of the the same services — including the new Google Play Games services — are supported Chrome, Android and even iOS, now so Google is unifying the experience, making it irrelevant whether you’re using the web, a phone or a tablet.

Google definitely has a two platform approach

Google has said in the past that we’ll see a merger of sorts between Chrome and Android. Now it has shown what it means: Iterate and mature the browser with new technologies that can provide the same experience as some native apps in Android and iOS. It won’t matter what you use in the future in Google’s world: Chrome is the realm of the desktop and laptop while Android (which also has a Chrome app) will power phones and tablets.

The services and APIs that Google offers, however, will allow developers to extend their reach across both of these platforms. With the new Google+ single sign on service, for example, users can get access to a web app or its Android counterpart. In fact, I was most impressed when Google demonstrated a web app that, upon signing in, asked if it should remotely install the Android application on a phone. These services are the glue that will tie Google’s two platforms together.

So what about the next version of Android and hardware?

Frankly — and in hindsight — I’m not sure Google needed to introduce an Android update, a refreshed Nexus 7 tablet a new Nexus phone. The story today was about making the experience better and seamless on existing hardware. And we still have tens of millions of devices that haven’t been upgraded to the Jelly Bean version of Android: Iterating it again only exacerbates the Android update challenges. Instead, Google has provided developers new tools to further improve their web and Android apps at the same time.

I can already see the benefits on my Chromebook Pixel: Google+ is already better, the new Hangouts messaging is improved and my preview of the updated Maps app is incredible. Using the touchscreen, I could zoom out to see the Earth with real-time cloud cover, see the stars where they’re supposed to be and then zoom back in to view panoramic virtual tours of historic locations. The new photo editing in Chrome is on my Pixel, as well, and Google’s cloud power is making my photos look better automatically.

Do I wish there was new hardware? Perhaps, but that’s just the gadget geek in me speaking. Software and services are just as important as hardware and, so far, I like what I see there. As long as Google continues to unify the Chrome web and Android experience in a positive way, I can live with my old phone and tablet.

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It doesn’t have a cool name like Cassandra, Voldemort or MongoDB, but Google is offering up a non-relational database called Google Cloud Datastore. Like almost everything the company has done since announcing its Compute Engine service at last year’s IO conference — including the rest of the features it announced on Wednesday — Cloud Datastore looks like a direct shot at current cloud champion Amazon Web Services.

AWS has a managed NoSQL database service called DynamoDB that’s replicated across three availability zones to ensure its stays up. Google’s Cloud Datastore sounds eerily similar, according to the product’s website (although Google calls its product “NoSQL-like). It’s fully managed, built for speed and scale and is replicated across data centers. For some queries, Google even promises that Cloud Datastore will support ACID transactions.

You can get details on the service and how it works here. Pricing information is available here.

If its goal is to compete with AWS, though, Google’s cloud platform still has a long way to go. Yes, it has most of the key services in place and even some seeming advantages in certain areas, but it’s lacking the incredible breadth of services AWS offers — everything from virtual server instances to a devops service to a hosted data warehouse. It’s also lacking a seven-year reputation for being an all-around reliable platform and an ever-growing list of large-enterprise users.

Of course, there’s also an argument to be made that Google doesn’t really have to compete with AWS at all when it comes to cloud computing. AWS made a name for itself by  taking all the new workloads from startups and corporate developers who wanted to build new types of applications and didn’t want to deal with the IT department; Google has the same opportunity ahead of it. New programming languages like Go and the unique nature of the rest of Google’s services, Cloud Datastore included, could make it the go-to place for a class of developers that likes to push the envelope in terms of application design.

Oh, and Google has a little ace up its sleeve called Android. If someone is so inclined to develop mobile applications for the most-popular mobile operating system on the planet, there are worse places to host them.

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It’s rare to see a company that is so established yet as cutting-edge as Shapeways. The company, founded in 2007 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, began as a one-off 3D printing service that offered basic plastic items for sale online. Over the years, however, the company has branched off into some amazing materials – steel, ceramic, and even sandstone – and they’ve already been able to support full color printing in 3D.

Now the company is opening a series of facilities in the US and they invited us to their first print shop in Long Island City, New York. In this massive, warehouse-like space, the company has set up a number of acrylic printers as well as a small customer service team. They plan on expanding further, adding more machines to an already impressive array. The goal is to offer 3D print shops close to major US metropolitan areas to reduce wait-times and to spread out the manufacturing process among different factories. The company will have 30 to 50 printers in the LIC location once it is complete.

I spoke with co-founder Peter Weijmarshausen about the Shapeways process, the printers, and what it takes to become a 3D-printing powerhouse in a nascent market. It’s great to see such a cool company expand and it’s even more fun to get to tour the facilities even before the machines, printers, and staff becomes fully operational. Enjoy the tour and tune in next time for another TechCrunch Makers!

TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.

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